The Future of Media via Axios

0:00Alright, so we are going to talk about the future of media. And this is a piece that comes from Axios, which is a single ring client. But I wanted to call out this piece because I think it's really interesting. And we'll share our reaction to this one. So I am going to share my screen. And those of you that are listening to audio, don't worry. We'll read it to you as well. And you can follow along. So Axios, they are a newsletter business. And here's what they said. So here are a couple of points I highlighted here. So number one, artificial intelligence will soon transform media on a scale and pace that rivals the internet two decades ago.

0:31Number two, any company betting only on high traffic seems doomed. The demand for subject matter expertise will rise fast. By the way, you can pause me at any time, Neil. I'm going to keep reading here. Go back to the high traffic one. What are they saying there? You want me to read the whole thing here? Yeah. Okay. So eight transformations seem likely and are animating our thinking at Axios. So number one is expertise. The days of gaming social media algorithms are coming to an abrupt and needed end. commoditized or general interest content will fade in value. Any company betting only on high traffic seems doomed.

1:05The demand for subject matter expertise will rise fast. Yeah. So they're pretty much saying if your content isn't unique and if your content is just too generic, you're going to get crushed because there's too much me too content, especially with AI that can create generic stuff that people really don't need to follow you anymore for. Yeah. And look, if you're saying, oh, well, I don't have an audience or anything like that. I like the whole mantra of documenting your journey in the very beginning because that's content. And then you can decide how you want to go about it. It makes a lot of sense to document.

1:37And if you are already creating content to just do more of it, because you are you, you're unique, and nobody can take that away from you. Literally, I did a little session for the MIT class a couple days ago. And I was just saying, look, I would argue that the content, that is a major piece of the business now, because if we're talking about the four forms of leverage, media is one of the pieces that all of us can learn to grow and nobody can ever take that away from us. So Axios also says, prepare for a world of fewer big generic brands, but more and better niche companies aimed at your passions.

2:10So for example, like marketing school. Now I'm going to continue on here. Do you want to say something? I can see that Google's also been making a big push for that for years in which they don't want you to create another Wikipedia site. There's enough of those. They want you to be an expert and create niche websites that are on one topic. Hopefully your niche has a big enough TAM though. Now I'm going to skip over to number four here. So it says inbox platform. So newsletters will rise in importance as Microsoft and Google make emailing magically easy by helping you write, answer, and sort emails.

2:39The inbox will be a more indispensable content destination and repository. What do you think about that? I'm with that one. It's so funny because in marketing, I always hear people saying like email marketing is dead. No, it's not dead. It drives so much revenue. We haven't really seen it decline. We track it every single year for our clients. Like our clients are generating more from email marketing this year than they have in the previous years, generally speaking, right? Like when we look across the board. I bet you, you're going to up your email game a couple of fold. We already have our email.

3:09Your personal email list. Our active email list is I think at 1.4 million almost at this point. Yeah. You have a huge list, but the way you post typically, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but usually you'll share a couple of links to stuff that you have, new stuff that you have coming out. I'm saying you're going to, the content within the email, I think you're going to level it up a couple of notches. We like the format. It's worked out really well for us. Our average open rate is between 30 and 40%. We probably will continue there. Sometimes we send out emails where we have no links and we just educate, but between both of those two, we think it's a great fit.

3:41That's my bet. We'll come back to this clip in two years. We'll see what happens. And number five, healthy content. So there's simply too much doom and gloom on TV and many news sites. Consumers want and deserve a better mix of content, including healthy and helpful content. What do you think about that? I agree with that. What's funny is, is I was at an event in Bucharest. It was called Brand Minds. And the organizer was showing me his Twitter feed. And they have a version of like Reels. And it just straight up looks like all the videos were people fighting, right? And it was just like depressing just seeing all those people fighting.

4:15And he's like, I don't even like watching these. I just try to skip. He's like, I can't do a negative where Twitter stopped showing him fighting videos. But yeah, people want to see positive stuff too. Funny enough, my wife doesn't like the news because it's all doom and gloom. I kind of like the news because it gives me a sense of reality and what's happening. I get a lot of the happy content already when I'm browsing and reading the web, but she hates watching the news with me because the news is mainly doom and gloom. Let me ask you a question. Do you think more people die from Alzheimer's or homicide?

4:46I would have to guess homicides. Yeah. So this is, this came from the guy again in that class. The last episode, we did a fun one here, but I guess Alzheimer's just because I felt like homicides was too obvious. That's, that was literally my only reasoning. And turns out that four times, so the people that die from Alzheimer's are four times more than homicides. It's because the news cycles that we put out there is just people dying. What, if it bleeds, it leads type of thing. You get what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So the majority is actually Alzheimer's is what you're saying, not Alzheimer's. Yeah, correct.

5:19But on the news, we always hear about the doom and gloom homicides. Yeah. And you would think that more people die from, oh, here's another one. You might think you said cancer, I would say cancer for sure. Right. Cause they say cancer is going to affect more than one third or something crazy like that of the population. Well, I don't know what it is, but let me just say this. I don't know what the percentage is supposed to be high. Most people would say, like if I were to say, oh, are you more likely to die from an airplane part following on you versus a shark attack? Most people would say shark attack.

5:49But reality is it's actually an airplane part. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. Okay. Last one. I think I have, yeah, this is my last highlight over here. So the sixth point over here is the efficiency. So consumers want most news and practical information delivered as efficiently as possible. This will be even more true as new technology tricks and toys fight for your attention. So the highlight here I have is the need to see news will not die, but younger audiences will want it shorter and on demand. This is why I love Twitter because Twitter gives you news really quickly. And this is why I love reels.

6:20So I'll follow like all the news channels on Instagram, like even Vice and whatever it may be, even though Vice is going bankrupt. You can quickly get a rundown like from the Wall Street Journal or Vice or whoever that you're following. The news segments in quick reels. And it's great. It's just like quick soundbites. You can spend three, four minutes. You can get all the news instead of watching a 30-minute episode. Speaking of which, I mean, obviously this podcast, we're coming up on seven years now. It's always been bite-sized. We do some reaction stuff too. But the plan here is to chop more of the stuff up for social, whether it's for reels and put the videos up on YouTube.

6:56We just give people what they need ultimately, but also make sure that we're repurposing it and posting natively for these different platforms because we have a lot of stuff. So quick recap, don't focus on creating generic information with your content. Focus on your niche. People want content from experts. Two, make it quick and concise. People don't want to have to watch 30 minutes of a video or listen to you for 30 minutes, even if you have a lovely voice. If they can get the same information and digest it in less than a minute, it's also why Instagram, TikTok, they're all pushing these short form videos.

7:30Same with YouTube. Even Facebook is now as well. And the third thing that I would say is people don't want doom and gloom all day long. People want happy content. So try to create more motivating, positive content versus the doom and gloom. And I've seen that as well. If I create positive content versus negative content, the positive content tends to get more engagement. Speaking of motivate, if you want to motivate us, give us a five-star review. You know what I'm saying? So we would really appreciate that. If you can give us a five-star review, we'd really appreciate that. Thank you guys for your time.